Swinburn's bond with Shergar still strong

FOR A few brief months 20 summers ago, they were the most celebrated six-legged duo since Roy Rogers and Trigger; Walter Swinburn and Shergar did not merely win the 1981 Derby, they flew across the Epsom Downs to pass the finishing post a stupendous 10 lengths in front of the cream of Europe's throughbreds.

It was the very stuff of Flat racing legend: the tale of a 19- year-old novice jockey being plucked from anonymity to ride a priceless horse owned by the Aga Khan and whom many turf experts regarded as the greatest equine athlete of all time. Together they raced to victory on four occasions, all with such ridiculous ease, however, that they won the hearts of millions. Even those who had never visited a racecourse or stepped inside a bookies' shop, knew of Shergar the wonder horse and his teenage companion.

What happened next, of course, served only to increase the mystique. In February 1983, Shergar was kidnapped from his stable at Ballymany Stud in County Kildare - most probably by an IRA splinter group - and vanished, never to be seen again despite more rumoured sightings than Elvis Presley and Lord Lucan combined. Over the years, `Shergar' has been spotted pulling a gypsy caravan down a country lane or grazing contentedly in countless fields the length and breadth of Ireland. Less savoury were the images that he had ended up in a tin of dog food. An IRA informer later revealed that Shergar had been stolen by a gang from County Kerry and shot because they were unable to control the horse in hiding. And only last April, a former mayor of Tralee Co Kerry, claimed to have uncovered Shergar's bullet- riddled skull while digging in a small wood; DNA testing disproved this latest theory.

Now 39, Swinburn, who will attend today's 2001 Vodafone Derby meeting in his new role of television commentator, looks back on their great adventure with tangible affection and regret. ``Because of all the hullabaloo surrounding Shergar, the excitement started to build weeks and weeks beforehand. Everyone knew there was no way Shergar would be beaten provided I could stay in the saddle. All anyone wanted to talk about was by how far he was winning his races despite having this inexperienced boy on board. In fact, the Derby was our easiest and eeriest race; I'd heard all the stories from my father (former top jockey, Wally Snr) about how rough it could be, how the start was crucial and how you could get knocked about. Yet all through the race I saw only two horses in front of me so I followed them all the way round before Shergar took it upon himself to hit the front coming down the hill.

``When you were galloping, he was the sort of horse you don't realise exactly how fast you were going because he had this really short, daisy-cutting action. He never wasted any time in the air and stayed really low. When he pulled me to the front I remember thinking `Whooah...' but he was gone, he was on his way.''

Although Frankie Dettori describes Swinburn as ``the most naturally talented jockey of his generation'', the engagingly modest Irishman is at pains to minimalise his contribution to the famous partnership. ``Anyone could have ridden Shergar, it's true, honestly. He was such a great, great horse. The greatest? It's impossible to compare him with Sea Bird II, say. All I can say is that he was far and away the greatest horse I ever rode and that is no insult to my two other Derby winners, Shahrastani and Lammtarra. That's why my overwhelming emotion when I entered the unsaddling enclosure was one of relief. I kept repeating: ``Thank God. I didn't mess it up for him.'' I think I only fully appreciated what could have gone wrong five years later when Greville Starkey was blamed for Dancing Brave's failure. It just about finished poor Greville and, who knows, if I'd done something similar it might have been the end of me.

``Don't forget. I had no idea how far we were in front - in fact. I still get embarrassed every time I see the film - so I actually picked up my whip a furlong out when I was 10 lengths clear because I heard a voice on the other side of the rails shouting: ``Go on. Lester.'' I thought it was Lester Piggott on Shotgun coming to haunt me. It was undoubtedly a housewife who mistook me for Lester thinking only the great man would be given a horse as good as Shergar to ride.''

Piggott was given the opportunity to ride Shergar when with Swinburn suspended, they cruised to victory in the 1981 Irish Derby but the teenage tyro was back in the saddle for the King George VI Stakes and the St. Leger when the ``invincibles'' were finally beaten. ``He was over the top by then; for all this brilliance, he was a particularly hard horse to get fit, plus the fact he had me on top of him winning by 10, 20 lengths or whatever. Whereas I'm sure that if he'd had Lester on board he'd have been winning by three or four lengths and saving a bit.'' Is that a criticism of yourself at such a tender age? ``Yes and no; whenever I mention that to people, they say ``Well, if he hadn't been winning by those margins, we wouldn't still be talking about him 20 years later'. But I do know he was a tired horse by the time of the St. Leger that September.

``I don't know what really occurred during Shergar's last days - and it's probably just as well I don't - but he didn't deserve what happened to him. He was a smashing fellow. Our family home is still littered with pictures of him, not in racing colours, but relaxing on the stud where he was like a family pet. The Aga Khan was heartbroken, as was trainer Michael Stoute and it still saddens us all even after all these years.''

Just as Shergar's short life was to end in horror, so Walter Swinburn rode into the valley of hell and, blessedly, out of the other side. Now a trim 11st without a pick of spare flesh on his frame, it seems inconceivable that he was trying to ride at 8st 71bs until his retirement just 14 months ago. To make that weight, he flirted dangerously with bulimia and anorexia.

``It's wonderful to able to enjoy three meals a day without worrying. It was really, really difficult to quit. Ooooh, it was hard, but I understood...'' Here Swinburn's voice trails off as he confronts the demons from his past. After being told he would never ride again in 1996 after suffering serious head and chest injuries in fall at Sha Tin, Hong Kong, Swinburn did return to win the Breeders' Cup just months later only to face an increasingly arduous battle against the scales. ``By August '98 I was burned out, even though I still felt I could come back. In '99 I took a flat up in London and gave myself nine months to bring my weight down. By the end of that time I realised I was looking like a skeleton. From having had an eating disorder - yes, I'd been bulimic - I'd gone to the other extreme and was bordering on the anorexic.

``Everyone thinks bulimia is an illness that only afflicts teenage girls, but it's not... I can look back and see now that I never treated myself as a human being as such, I was Walter the machine. I didn't hate myself but because I couldn't control my weight I grew to resent my body. I couldn't diet - I didn't try 100 times to diet. I tried a million times - and just couldn't. A jockey's life is unlike a footballer's who has two or three days to recuperate and give his body time to recover between games; a jockey is doing it day in, day out. The only way I can explain it to people who find bulimia difficult to understand is that it's like living in a pressure cooker which keeps bubbling away. In the end, something has to blow.''

Did you know you had an eating disorder - the years of bingeing followed by self-induced nausea - or did you try to deny it? ``It was something I thought I'd invented; it was great because it seemed like the answer to all my problems. I didn't even have to visit the sauna. But by the early Nineties I can remember thinking: `Ooooh, maybe this isn't so clever after all.' I asked my body to do a lot of things, a lot of it unfair and then everything started unfolding, it all became secretive, my self- worth was very low and I felt like a bit of a failure because my body was not behaving as I wanted it to. But I loved riding, that was where I was happiest: it was me.''

With the love of his fiancee, baby daughter and family, Walter Swinburn has stepped back from the abyss and is now eating and drinking as normal; when he does revisit the past, it is to Epsom on the back of Shergar on that glorious afternoon 20 Junes ago that he prefers to return, not to the dark days of his mental and physical torture.

- Copyright: The Telegraph Group Ltd., London 2001.

ROBERT PHILIP

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Sport
Previous : Rajinder gets the best out of The Proletarian
Next     : Sonal survives the Megha thunderbolts;
           Sheetal-Liza pair triumphs